Government collapse has now become an urgent necessity

As Mark Steyn searingly put it last week,

“If you were going to cut one “advanced” social democracy loose and watch it plunge into the abyss…it would be hard to devise a better candidate than Greece.”

The 'burning issue' in Greece right now

Indeed.  People ask indignantly why these ”heartless speculators” are “attacking” Greece, but this is to miss the wood for the Amazon jungle.  It’s not, as many would desperately have you believe, the speculators who are “taking Greece down”, any more than it’s the vultures and maggots who kill the buffalo.  The naked short sellers and derivatives hit-men and investment banker vampire squids might be pretty ruthless, but they are not doing the killing, they’re just disposing of the dead body in the most clinically efficient way they know how.

Greece has sunk into the cosmic equivalent of a black hole and the only people to blame are, well, the Greeks.

As Steyn points out, at a measly 1.3 children per woman, Greece’s fertility rates are at a level from which no society has ever recovered.  At 1.3 children per woman, 100 Greek grandparents will have just 42 Greek grandchildren.  Let me put that another way: At current birth rates, in just three generations the Greek population will fall from around 11 million to just 3 million.  Ouch.

That is a civilisational implosion of epic proportion.  The writing is not so much on the wall in cryptic riddles as it is bolted to the billboards in large, bright, flashing neon letters.

What does it mean?  It means the Greek debt will never be repaid.  It means that the Greek welfare game is up.  It means that the Greek economy is in perma-recession.  It means that the Greeks are quite literally driving themselves into extinction.

How did it come to this?  Well, the European welfare state has leveraged off past real European wealth, but, as Maggie Thatcher knew all too well, Socialism works until you run out of other people’s money.  Having mortgaged its assets for the privilege of extended coffee breaks and cradle-to-grave welfare, there is now nothing left to mortgage, and, even worse, there are too few children to pick up the tab.

Even more worrying though is that this is not just the Greek condition.  Sure, Greece is the squeezed pimple, but the acne has spread think and fast and it’s only a matter of time before other Western nations have to face up to the same realities as Greece.

As Steyn points out,

“And yet and yet…riot-wracked Athens isn’t that much of an outlier. Greece’s 2010 budget deficit is 12.2 per cent of GDP; Ireland’s is 14.7. Greece’s debt is 125 per cent of GDP; Italy’s is 117 per cent. Greece’s 65-plus population will increase from 18 per cent in 2005 to 25 per cent in 2030; Spain’s will increase from 17 per cent to 25 per cent. As lazy, feckless, squalid, corrupt and violent as Greece undoubtedly is, it’s not that untypical. It’s where the rest of Europe’s headed, and Japan and North America shortly thereafter. About half the global economy is living beyond not only its means but its diminished number of children’s means.”

Folks, the very life of the West is being snuffed out.  The outright collapse won’t happen tomorrow, or next week, or next month.  But Greece is going over the waterfall and is being followed in short order by a host of other rickety rafts we’ve complacently come to believe are the most stable and immutable nations of the modern world.

As we said back in March in the post “We’re all Greeks now“,

“By ignoring the past and listening to Keynes and his disciples, irresponsible governments have jeopardised our future.  Worse still, while the state has mortgaged our future to pay for a party, Mr. and Mrs. Simms from 8 Dreary Lane in Dullsville have failed totally to plan for a rocky future.  A world full of trusting citizens has given the reins over to the state.  They entrusted their old age to the state, let the state make all the important decisions for them, and now realise the people driving the juggernaut were playing cards in the cockpit as it careered headlong toward disaster.

Everyone’s pointing fingers at Greece, but the three little fingers pointing back at everyone have a poignant message: In the post-modern liberal democratic state, we’ll all Greeks now.”

The remorseless growth of the state has become the pride of modern Europe.  But in reality it is the death of modern Europe.  Indeed, the only thing that can save the West now is the total and full failure of the modern welfare state.

This will show that the key to real and lasting prosperity is not a large sclerotic government, but large freedom.  It will force people to look after the elderly themselves, work for their own retirement, and not expect the state to pick up the tab for every convenience in life.  It will mean lower taxes and lower living costs as the regulatory burden of state control is released.  It will mean a return to self-reliance and responsibility.  It will mean a return the support of family and not the support of the government.

Most of all, it will mean the reconstitution of reality.

Folks, unsettling as it might be to contemplate, the fact is this:  Bailouts or no bailouts, Greece and other Western welfare states are on the path to utter implosion.  The very structure of these modern states is unraveling in not-so-slow motion before our very eyes.

The collapse of the state as we know it is the first necessary remedy for this sick system.

It must happen and it will happen.